Garmin Montana

POILoader is an awesome program, and it's really not difficult if you read the manual. In there you find little gems like this:

"Certain keywords included in the POI name or filename trigger proximity alerts. If a filename contains “GATSO,” “mobile,” "SPECS,” “safety,” “speed,” “redlight” or “camera” but does not have any speed information, the POI Loader uses an alert speed of 0 which always generates an alert at a distance of 400 meters or .25 miles. Proximity alert information can also be added to individual POIs using BaseCamp."

Thanks. I saw the proximity thingy. Also saw were one cannot use them in a route. Got to clean house and runs some errands. Next week learn how to use a CVS file to manage POIs. Then I can clean up my way point list. I saw in GPX files that after </Metadata> the Way points start and each way point ends with </wpt>. Then tracks begin. Each track begins and ends with <trk>. The way points in tracks include the elevation. Which when I save a way point is not included. It may be a setting I have.

If you are concerned about needing to use the POI location in a Route just save the POI as a Waypoint on the device. Then you will have both a POI and a Waypoint with the same location and each can be used as appropriate.

Sent from my LG-H901 using Tapatalk

is there any car mount for the Montana that has a built in speaker, like the one for the zumo 590?

Yes the Garmin friction mount has one. I finally got one about 6 months ago. It works pretty well but is sometimes hard to understand. .2 miles usually sounds like 2.2 miles. And street names are hard to understand and often the City Navigator street name is not the one on the street sign, especially for county roads.

My car mount that came with my 610 has a speaker. Fully understandable. It is a suction type. Have an adhesive tape backed disc in the car to attach.

Sorry about my late reply. Just back from my ride with the afore mentioned waypoints on the GPS. As predicted due to the nature of the trails and tracks I was following I indeed ended up missing turns as I predicted !

How do I upload some of the waypoints here for you to take a look at ? Another thing that became apparent last week were that the icons i had used to differentiate between off road turns (colored triangles)and on road turns (colored flags) in Basecamp were not duplicated when imported into the Montana. All turns were imported as flags............

I will be taking a look at POI loader over the coming weeks. Thanks for the links.

To see what waypoint symbols the Montana supports open a waypoint on the device and click on the waypoint icon selector box (upper left). I see colored flags, pins, cubes and circles in the Markers category; but no triangles. There's a few other Markers not in there. Between all Waypoint categories, I would say about 75% of the Basecamp icons are also on the Montana.

when you reply to a message, the middle button is 'upload pic or gps track'. you can upload routes/tracks and /or waypoints with that button.

Also there are some icons on the Montana not on Basecamp.

I've duplicated way points in Basecamp and changed the location to get the icon I wanted.

Audio plug on Amps Rugged mount question.
In my van I was wanting to be able to hear audio from my gps (both from my Montana and my 276CSX)---------don't want that on my bike--but would be nice in the van.
So-------there is a female audio plug on this mount and I tried plugging an audio wire into and then into my auxilliary input on my radio------no worky.
The wire's plugs had 3 connectors--male on both ends ----and was a wire I had laying around off an old computer for audio connections.

I googled till I was wore out on what kind of cable I need to use----I know the size------but should it be a 2-wire or 3 wire----- and just what did Garmin intend for you to plug this into to hear audio ??????

Gamins online instructions are no help----they mention the audio plug is included, but give no further instructions.

Here' the mount I have.

The Garmin output is mono (2-wire). Also you need an isolated input, the signal ground wire can not be connected to the 12-volt or chassis ground. Unfortunately most car stereos have the signal and chassis ground connected. You can use a ground loop isolation transformer http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/555-8492 to connect the gps mount to your radio. You'll only get sound from one side since these are stereo units. If you want stero sound you'll have to add an adaptor like this http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/27-320 plugged into the garmin cable first, then the isolator and finally the cable to the stereo.

Just curious.

Could you plug the audio into a BT transmitter and then pick up the audio portion on something like a Sena unit?

Isn't the plug for using earbuds? I would think a simple external speaker would work. Maybe something left over from your CB days!

Like this

Yes a simple external speaker-------I'm going to try that first-----that does sound so simple and I'm bettin' that's what it was designed for-------don't want to use earbuds and be attached to the thing.
Thanks Mr. Dog (from one dog to another)

FYI - pg 1 of the Montana 600 series owner's manual it says: <referencing the audio jack in the side> "Stereo headphone jack (page 18)". So stereo is almost certainly supported.

A few quick tests:

Put floptana in auto mount and instantly on the system status page (single tap on power button) it shows an additional volume slider for the voice prompts.

In AMPS rugged mount with nothing in the AMPS audio plug - no slider

With AMPS plugged into - well all kinds of things, stereo/mono headsets, PC speakers, iPhone/android headsets - all no slider

Plug stuff into the jack in the side and I get the slider whether in the AMPS mount or not...


My conclusion is that stereo/mono seems irrelevant - certainly to the side jack and that there's nothing I found that makes the AMPS mount work so if you plug into the jack in the side of the unit vs. the mount (yep, very inelegant to say the least) you should have success, albeit a clunky solution. As far as isolation, *my opinion* is that it is a red herring and that isolation is [almost always] a good thing it's not necessary at all here....

YMMV...

Having cut the AMPS mount cable and installed a new jack, I can tell you with certainty that it is a mono jack with only two wires (shield and signal).

I connect mine to a Sena SR10 Bluetooth transmitter without issue.

Thanks for all the good ideas.

A Bluetooth transmitter or FM transmitter wil plug right into the audio plug on the rugged mount. Amazon or eBay for those. The car mount has its own speaker.

Looking at the rugged mount audio plug, I can see 3 connections will contact whatever 3 conductor 1/8" plug that plugs into it, so use a stereo 3 conductor for sure and you will get sound out of both sides. I don't doubt a bit that there is only 2 wires going to the plug, but they must parallel the left and right with one wire, and the other for common.